1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer, a printing method and a three-dimensional printer.
2. Discussion of the Background
A various printers for printing characters, figures, and the like on a print substrate such as paper are conventionally known. As an example, a printer connected to a computer to perform a printing on a paper has been widely used for business purposes and household purposes. Typical conventional printer is of a style of printing while feeding a paper or a sheet member as a print substrate in a predetermined feeding direction and moving a printer head thereof in a scanning direction perpendicular to the feeding direction. JP-A-2003-191455 and JP-A-2004-148666 disclose such printers. The contents of these publications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The conventional printers are of a type of performing predetermined printing on a planate sheet material or a flat surface of a solid object, that is, of a type for performing two-dimensional printing. Recently, however, there is a need for a printer capable of performing a printing on an object having a three-dimensional surface (for example, a cylindrical surface, a spherical surface, and other various curved surfaces).